Elenie Opffer Researcher Profile

Elenie Opffer, Ph.D., Communications, University of Colorado, Boulder is a faculty member at the Western Institute of Social Research in Berkeley, CA. She is also affiliate faculty at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA and serves as a teaching fellow at the Intercultural Communication Institute’s summer intensive program. Her research focuses on studies investigating the intersection of cultural, gender, and/or sexual identities and the ways in which people construct, negotiate and transform their identities and communities. She is currently involved in applied research to aid peacebuilding and gender violence reduction efforts in high conflict areas of Nigeria. She serves as a senior advisor to the Center for Sustainable Development and Research in Africa, and the National Peace Summit Group of Nigeria. While she has conducted ethnographic and discourse analysis studies, her passion is for conducting action research where the results can be immediately applied to social transformation efforts. In this endeavor, she has created conflict transformation materials and LGBTQ Safe Zone Materials used in universities and communities.

Opffer, E. (1994). Coming out in class: Notes from the college classroom. In R.J. Ringer (Ed.), Queer words, queer images: Communication and the construction of homosexuality. New York: New York University Press.